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Category: giving back

The statistics are dumbfounding. According to Operation Smile, every three minutes, a child is born with a cleft lip or cleft palate somewhere around the world. If left untreated, the seriousness of this condition can lead to problems with eating, speech development, socialization, and even the loss of hearing. For children born with this condition in the United States, the surgery usually takes place early, limiting the potential complications. For children born in third world countries, however, access to this life-improving surgery is limited, cost prohibitive, and, far too often, unsafe.

At 3MP Atlanta, we are thrilled to be collaborating once again with Operation Smile to help children around the world receive important surgeries to fix cleft lips and palates. The goal of Operation Smile, started in 1982 by Dr. William Magee, Jr and his wife Kathleen, is to ensure that no child is left without access to safe surgical options for correcting cleft lips or cleft palates. Our team knows that without a proper smile we can’t be successful. We are beyond excited to help the foundation raise money to provide life changing smiles across the world.

This year, 3MP Atlanta set up a tailgate for the cause and canvassed Sun Trust Park during a Braves double-header in early June to collect donations. We cooked hot dogs, played games, and raised awareness. Our team was able to put the skills we teach into good use by giving back. We are pleased to announce that, thanks to Braves Country, we raised enough money to cover the cost of FIVE cleft palate surgeries for children around the world!

What is the value of a smile? For most, that answer is, “There is no cost.” But, for children in under-developed countries whose families cannot afford the surgery to fix a cleft lip or pallet, the cost is much greater. When children in the United States are born with the condition, it’s typically an easy and quick fix. For children in some of these countries, they don’t typically receive the reparation surgery at birth. This affects their ability to eat and interact socially. Some are shunned and some grow up only knowing their community for fear of travelling. Operation Smile was founded to combat that. They provide surgeries to children and young adults in various parts of the world, making this life changing surgery easily accessible. It is with great honor and excitement that 3MP Atlanta was able to host an event in June to raise money to help cover the costs of these surgeries.

At 3MP Atlanta, a smile is part of our job. We meet and handle client acquisition. It is vital that our team provides a positive and professional interaction each time. Knowing how important a smile is, we excitedly dove into putting together an Operation Smile field day, which was hosted in Grant Park. We put together a team to plan and organize the event, led by top account manager, Cash Oliver. With his leadership, we were able to put together knockerball, face painting, corn hole, and food for the event.

On the day of the event, we arrived, set up, and started grilling out. There were 50 plus people in attendance and our team also collected donations from other park-goers. Teams were able to play corn hole while food was being grilled. Spectators watched on as knockerball, a sport in which each player straps on an inflatable ball and knocks each other around in a game like soccer, started and had quite a few laughs as the teams entered combat! Overall, the event was a great place for the community to gather and we were able to fund two complete operations with our efforts.

3MP Atlanta would like to give a special thanks to Cobb Knockerball who aided in our efforts to raise money and to Michael Palomba who purchased food and beveragesfor the event. Want to contribute? Click here.